Deploying Ubiquiti UniFi APs with a RaspberryPi 2 Controller

I recently got fed up with the mediocre coverage and speeds of my home wireless network even after throwing DD-WRT on the pair of APs (Netgear and Linksys .11n) to eek out all the performance I could. So I decided to take the plunge and go up market a bit with a couple APs from Ubiquiti Networks.

I went with a pair of UAP (.11n) and UA-AC-LR (.11ac) units for a mix of coverage in light usage areas and better performance in high usage areas, along with a RaspberryPi 2 to act as the controller. Since the UniFi APs are becoming more popular among home users, and I can’t be the only one wary of putting management functions in the cloud, I decided to document the setup process.

Open /etc/logrotate.conf in your text editor of choice and add the below
This will rotate the above set syslogs and the logs created by the UniFi installer on a weekly basis# Rotate Ubiquiti logs
/var/log/Ubiquiti/*/ {
missingok
weekly
rotate 5
create

}/var/log/unifi/*/ {
missingok
weekly
rotate 5
create
}

Step 8: Point UniFi Controller to Syslog

Log into your controller and click Settings in the lower left

Under the Services heading find Remote Logging and click the check box

Enter the IP of your Raspberry Pi

Click Apply

For the next post in this series we’ll step through installing an ELK stack and use it to monitor the syslog feed we setup along with the UniFi controller logs.